Monsanto opens US$3 million BT corn seed facility in Philippine's Bulacan

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Publish time: 29th April, 2014      Source: www.cnchemicals.com
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April 29, 2014

   

   
Monsanto opens US$3 million BT corn seed facility in Philippine''s Bulacan
   
   

   

In order to serve as its seed "refuge-in-a bag" (RIB) facility, Monsanto Philippines Inc. opened last week a PHP134-million (US$3 million) plant in Pulilan, Bulacan.

   

   

"The plant, which sits in a total land area of 6,000 square meters, has RIB blending and packing capabilities, and will also be used for corn seed-quality testing, re-bagging, inventory management and warehousing with cold and ambient storage facilities," Monsanto said in a statement on April 25.

   

   

According to Monsanto, the plant is operated by 50 people and is the first RIB facility in the country and second in the world.

   

   

Monsantosaid the facility, which has an annual capacity of 15,000 tonnes, blends non-Bt seeds with Bt seed in a single bag, resulting in the planting of a mixture of Bt corn seeds and non-Bt seeds in the field.

   

   

The company added it expects the mixture will allow easier compliance for farmers with the refuge requirement without the need to plant or maintain a separate refuge.

   

   

Establishing a RIB is a requirement under the Insect Resistance Management (IRM) strategy of the Department of Agriculture (DA) for Bt corn, primarily to preserve the long-term effectiveness of the Bt corn technology as a natural insecticide.

   

   

The refuge strategy is global practice aimed at delaying, if not preventing, insect resistance, particularly the Asiatic corn borer, by serving as host to susceptible insects that can mate with the rare-resistant insects surviving exposure to Bt proteins in the Bt corn crop.

   

   

Online sources explain structured refuge as setting aside some percentage of the crop land for non-Bt varieties of the same crop, "to provide for the production of susceptible [SS] insects that may randomly mate with rare resistant [RR] insects surviving the Bt crop to produce susceptible RS heterozygotes that will be killed by the Bt crop."

   

   

This will remove resistant (R) "alleles" from the insect populations and delay the evolution of resistance, online data revealed.

   

   

According to Monsanto, the refuge strategy can suppress the increase of potentially resistant insects by having more susceptible insects mate with the resistant ones, resulting in susceptible offspring, adding that the "the borer population will thus continue to consist largely of susceptible insects to which the Bt corn is effective."

   

   

"Our RIB facility is here to better serve the needs of our farmers," Monsanto Philippines Country Lead Sandro Rissi was quoted as saying.

   

   

Currently, only Monsanto produces products with two Bt proteins that require only 5% RIB [non-Bt type]. Other companies have single-trait Bt corn products that require 10% refuge.